


Finding Home

by magetemplar



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Eventual Bellarke, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, but it's a Bellarke ending so uh yeah sorry, establishes Clexa, it's just lots and lots of pining, multi-chapter fic, post 2x16, slow start
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-19 01:31:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3591306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magetemplar/pseuds/magetemplar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Clarke Griffin leaves Camp Jaha, the remainder of the 100, and Bellamy with a 'may we meet again' - she knows she must search for something, whether it be redemption or a new purpose, she's not sure what, that calls from a long way off. In her absence, Bellamy Blake struggles with leading the camp through recuperation from the horrors inflicted upon them at Mount Weather, forever wary of whatever new threat may arise to harm their people; and far across the sea, in his promised land, A.L.I.E. tasks Thelonious with his first mission: to lead his people home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding Home

 

They spread their arms open to soak up the sunlight upon their skin, their eyes stared upward in bruised eye sockets, chests heaving to breathe the sweet air of the ground yet again, and Clarke watched, wishing she’d gotten them out sooner, relieved she’d gotten them out at all. Finally, finally she allowed herself to feel the weariness of sleepless nights and the deep-set exhaustion in her bones. The others were too busy to ask ‘what now?’ – her mother lay in a stretcher instead of treating one upon it, Jasper and Monty stood far apart – one with eyes red and angry, the other stooped in uncertainty and sorrow, and both refusing to look back; and Octavia scouted the surrounding forest, wary of any distinct rustle – was she on the watch for grounders who may have disobeyed their orders and returned? Clarke had to wonder who would? A ruthless commander lead a loyal force – and she’d had her people returned from Mount Weather without losing anyone. That was a certain victory.

Clarke regretted thinking that their plan would succeed – she’d been so certain. So certain that the alliance would hold against anything the Mountain Men could offer. Finn had died. And she’d been wrong. She’d let the missile fall upon Tondc. She’d sent Bellamy into the enemy’s territory. She could still feel the touch of Lexa’s lips on her own. And she’d been wrong. Lexa had won and Clarke had irradiated women and men and children to get to her people because she couldn’t find any other way anymore, and they’d be right there on the screen in front of her, separated by mere floors and yet out of reach as the mountain men kept drilling into their bones.

And they’d screamed. _How dare they chained her people to the wall like animals? How dare they spill the blood of her people across their floors?_

‘ _Together_ ,’ Bellamy insisted, but she wouldn’t let him take that burden even if her hand had been atop hers. He’d shed guard’s vest and was standing not too far away, never too far away since their reunion, merely watching the others as she was. Clarke savoured it. In the stretch of untamed land outside of Mount Weather’s door, she knew he’d look after the others better than anyone. Not even her love for them would allow her to stay, but she’d wait, she’d wait until they were all safely inside the fence of Camp Jaha without her. She steeled herself such that _no one_ could convince her otherwise - not even pained eyes and echoed words and reminders that she wasn’t the only one to pull that lever.

‘It had to be done’.

 

 -

 

The drop ship was colder than usual in the touch of winter as Clarke sat in the center of the first scar she’d left on the surface of earth, hugging her knees to her chest. She’d left her pack in Camp Jaha, the press of the metal of her gun against her skin was her only reassurance in her first home on the ground. It smelt familiar and yet not. It was full of ghosts – memories of the hundred of them holed up together in the tiny camp, trying to survive and depending on each other for everything. The scents were long gone, the smell of fear had faded into ash, and the space was wide and lonely without the presence of the others bar the graves that lay just outside the wall of their final home on the ground. There were so many questions she’d never get the answer to. What would Wells think of the person she’d become? Would he recognise her at all? What would he have done? They were choking. They made her eyes burn anew.

Clarke couldn’t stay. It’d be only a matter of time before they sent a search party out after her, led by one who knew her only too well, one who’d know she’d return to pay her last. Her hands busied themselves with a practice they knew well but long since done, smudging the lines of her charcoal drawing over the centre of the drop-ship’s main floor between dried blood and debris. Her fingers captured the joy and disbelief of their landing, of their taste of fresh air and the sight of rising green trees. A time when they weren't fighting for their lives, their people - though that had changed in mere days.

How often had she drawn the ground on the ark? She’d lost count a lifetime ago.

She couldn’t stay.

She added the last curve to Wells’ smile and the flower between Finn’s grasp, and sat back on her heels to look at her tribute. It veiled the desperate times, the terrifying times beneath the awe and wonder. It was her glow in the dark forest. But that war was over, Wells was dead, Finn was dead, their first home was deserted, and she had so much blood on her hands she could see a monster reflected in her own mother’s eyes as she stared back at Clarke. 

She couldn’t stay. Clarke rose from her knees, bruised red from pressing against the hard floor for so long. She gently placed the art supplies in the pack she scrounged from the wreckage. There weren’t any rations – unfortunate. Bellamy had always been a better hunter than she had. She couldn’t waste the little ammo she had. With one last long look around the drop-ship and a deep, shuddering breath, she pulled across the shredded curtains and left, stepping across ash and bone as she went – cheeks dry, head raised, eyes watching.

The ground made warriors of them all.

 

-

 

East - that was her direction. Clarke wanted to see the sea. And after that? She couldn’t think of after that, she didn’t know where she would go, didn’t know what she was searching for but she was searching. It was far off. Perhaps it was over the ocean. Perhaps it would remind her that her hands could do more than just kill and kill and kill: the drop-ship, Tondc, Mount Weather, and Finn and Maya and President Dante.

The tunnels were eerie without the sounds of the reapers gnawing flesh. She had to wonder where’d they gone after their supply of the red had cut off. Did they go off to die from their withdrawal or were they out there searching for it until their bodies gave in? She was supposed to be able to save them. Instead she was alone, wandering down the tunnel tracks alone, with a gun in place of a medical kit.

Her lips were dry, her throat was dry. She was desperate for some form of conversation to distract her from her own guilt, even if she didn’t deserve the company. She fought at the selfish wish that she’d asked Bellamy to come with her. What would they do without him?

The stream where Finn and she had stopped on their way to find Jasper eons ago was where she paused, washing her face… and her hands, again and again and again. They were clean but they didn’t feel like it, the felt sticky – as sticky as they got when she operated on a patient, or she sliced open a grounder’s neck, or she stuck the knife in Finn. “It’s just water.” She murmured, voice teetering on the edge of panic through breathy words. “Just water.”

But she still remained in the shadow of the mountain, and for as long as she did her hands would be red, red, red. A part of her wanted to return to those halls and bury every single one of them, return to the crater of TonDC and pull every corpse from the wreckage – it’d kill her, but wasn’t that what she deserved?

The memory of her parents’ voices, Wells’ exasperated look, and Bellamy’s eyes stopped her. She couldn’t die. Not yet. _Not yet_.

Clarke wanted to see the sea. Maybe it’d have enough water to wash her clean, maybe it’d tell her what she was looking for. She left the water of the forest behind, droplets still clinging to her hands to remind her that, physically, they were clean.

The stars spanned the sky above, freckling the dark blue with bright light. They seemed so distant that she now found it strange that she fell from them – fell from the sky, not as a star to be wished upon, but one of a hundred sent to die; a hundred criminal teenagers turned hardened warriors – Earth their trial by fire. Someone should’ve warned the ground of their arrival, her arrival; someone should’ve told them they were sending down a bomb.

Clarke Griffin.

She hasn’t heard her name in days. It’s not so easy to forget. Was she Jake Griffin’s daughter any more? She didn’t know.

Her feet carried her ever forward, away, away, away.


End file.
